Been away but back now. Where is everything?

[apricotslice]

Greetings all.

I'm afraid I've been away for a long time now, writing novels instead of game guides.

I've had a fan point out how good X4 is, and since I was one who never went to Rebirth, I'm only just starting to look at X4. The intro vid I watched did make it look like the X4 I was wanting a long time ago.

So I went looking for the walk-throughs and the game guides. And couldn't find any. I found a wiki link, but it only displays blank pages.

So where are all the guides?

Btw. Hello all the old timers who are still here. I still have AP loaded, and go in there periodically. But I've not done any serious game playing now for years. Currently writing novel 27.

[steve_v]

Greetings all.

Greetings, oh legendary apricot. Much pleased to see you are still around.

I've had a fan point out how good X4 is, and since I was one who never went to Rebirth, I'm only just starting to look at X4. The intro vid I watched did make it look like the X4 I was wanting a long time ago.

I got the same impression (also skipped Rebirth), and while I still think the game is very, very cool, I do find it to still be a bit buggy and unfinished as of 2.50. Not trying to put you off mind, just fair warning.
It absolutely has the potential to be the X4 I always wanted, and it's a massive improvement over Rebirth... Just don't expect X3++ right off the bat, and try not to let the UI get you down. It does get a little less aggravating as you get used to it.

So I went looking for the walk-throughs and the game guides.

Ditto. Didn't find much.

So where are all the guides?

Short answer: The manual stickied on the forum and youtube.
Roguey has a bunch of ship stats 'n stuff and there is a station calculator here. Other than that, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, go fly and find out?

[apricotslice]

Thanks steve_v.

Manual huh? My philosophy has always been when all else fails, read the manual.

Youtube? I guess that figures these days. Not a place I go much, except when desperate.

I was hoping for a heads up so I didn't have to waste too much time I dont have getting started.

About the only time I get to play these days is when my brain is offline. So thinking about things tends not to happen then.

I already gathered there is no real plot. Is there a thread somewhere telling you where the starting places are for what is there?

Go fly and find out was my first guide to X3R. lol

I guess I need to do that.

[steve_v]

Youtube? I guess that figures these days. Not a place I go much, except when desperate.

I agree wholeheartedly, watching videos is a properly painful way to acquire information that usually amounts to little more than a paragraph or so when written down... But I guess you go where the info is.

I already gathered there is no real plot. Is there a thread somewhere telling you where the starting places are for what is there?

The only "plots" in the game so far are the HQ plot, which you should get after scanning the first sparkly thing/glowing red ball you see on the outside of a station, and the "timeline", which is just a bit of backstory revealed by opening data vaults hidden around the universe.
The former is so short that a walkthrough isn't really needed IMO, and the latter is just a colossal waste of time unless you really like the lore - in which case it would be "use the long range scanner to find vaults, scan sparkly things to unlock them, repeat."
The best source of detailed information on both of those is, again, unfortunately, youtube.

[apricotslice]

Looking over the Steam X4 page.

I notice the autopilot still hasn't been fixed. Don't know if I should laugh or cry.

But the first question is,

Do I buy X4, or X4 Collectors? or X4 and Content? (Which is $2 less)

I gather there is an expansion already out and another to come?

[Buzz2005]

collectors edition gives you first 2 DLCs for free and there is no any DLC out yet, but after 3.0 patch ego will release a Split DLC

[apricotslice]

collectors edition gives you first 2 DLCs for free and there is no any DLC out yet, but after 3.0 patch ego will release a Split DLC

Thanks.

I gather from a lot of the reviews the Autopillok is still active.

Is it worth getting the game now? Or should one wait until after the 3.0 patch comes out?

[Kadatherion]

Everything's in the same place everyone is: elsewhere. X4 is in a quite rough place right now, 95% of the players (steam stats) are either gone for good or anyway not currently playing it hoping for the expansion to solve the many design issues a lot of people feel the game has (the usual autopillock being, not surprisingly, just one of many)... as such, also much of the activity that usually comes with a game - guides, mods, discussions, let's plays etc - are pretty much like these forums: stalling. Right now most of us are pretty much holding our breath. And yeah, the recurring suggestion you'll see around here is to wait for 3.0/split expansion, hoping that will turn things around.

[apricotslice]

Thanks. Any idea how far away that is?

[steve_v]

I notice the autopilot still hasn't been fixed. Don't know if I should laugh or cry.

IME the hamster has been given an even smaller window than it had in X3, as well as a new penchant for flying through the side of accelerators and getting stuck inside asteroids. It's not just unfixed, it's worse. There's no hull damage from collisions though.
OTOH it has also acquired a sense of humour, as you will occasionally hear betty say "Autopilot epically failed" as you slam into a rock at 5000m/s.

Do I buy X4, or X4 Collectors? or X4 and Content? (Which is $2 less)

I bought the collectors edition, but that's just me.

I gather there is an expansion already out and another to come?

I don't know of any expansion that is actually out, but we have a fair idea of what to expect with the first one (split), and that should be here soon.

Is it worth getting the game now? Or should one wait until after the 3.0 patch comes out?

I'm having fun with it as-is, but there are plenty of rough edges. Waiting for 3.0 would probably save you some headaches, but despite the general doom-and-gloom around here I'd argue that the game is quite playable right now.

[Kadatherion]

Thanks. Any idea how far away that is?

No official ETA at the moment, 2.5 just recently came out of beta, being the first patch that stayed in beta for quite a long time, after a fairly fast patching pace in the first few months. According to what Egosoft had stated in the past, 3.0 is supposed to come around the same time or just a little before the Split expansion (perhaps in the typical fashion of a content rich free patch that raises interest for the concurrent DLC, but that's just my guess, mind me), which was generically scheduled for 2019 with no further specifics. If I were to bet, I'd say around fall, maybe? Summer's pretty much here after all, and it often isn't the best time to do major releases sales wise (unless a game is targeted at kids). But it could start its beta process during summer, I suppose.

EDIT: Also, hey, post number 1000 here! Wish it was on a lighter note, but hey, 1000 is 1000

[Buzz2005]

collectors edition gives you first 2 DLCs for free and there is no any DLC out yet, but after 3.0 patch ego will release a Split DLC

Thanks.

I gather from a lot of the reviews the Autopillok is still active.

Is it worth getting the game now? Or should one wait until after the 3.0 patch comes out?

Well I'm not really a person to give an answer to that, as it's always yes its worth it
Bugs are not the problem but the game is content deficient and functionality deprived, autopilok was improved like landing on stations ships no longer clip trough, not 100% of the times but way better then before

There is a problem with ships wondering off from protect positions and follow enemy ships to the ends of the universe, again it does not happen always
Following is borked, they are always lagging way behind (they first go the the position where the ship is when you start the command then repeat when they get there)
Autotraders and station traders make crappy deals, no full cargo and stupid cheap wares (mostly station traders are very bad as you can configure autotraders but not station traders), EGO is working on that right now at least I hope that's what they mean when they said economy problems

There are mods to help with some of that, like legions mule and tradestations and such
The way they implemented music is I dont want to say stupid but I can't play without the music mod, just install the one that kills the battle music

You can't destroy stations completely if they are in the process of rebuilding or building, and no mass crew management (I dont do boarding but as I read it's a big pain in the ass)
Faction AI fix is a must mod for me or anyone who does mod there game to fix lots of issues like the above destroying stations completely

Anyway with all that I still play the game and have lots of fun, xenon are getting stronger

Its EGO so no surprises, its all going to slowly be addressed and get better

[Kadatherion]

Its EGO so no surprises, its all going to slowly be addressed and get better

Hope so, not so sure anymore. After Rebirth they sorely needed a win, not yet another one of the same old grief circles. Money for development isn't going to be infinite, and didn't look like they had cash to spare even at launch considering they had to cut 2 races - and all the relative assets - out of the base game (or how they entertained, at least for a bit, the possibility of adding microtransactions via ventures). And if the numbers we are seeing right now will translate in how much sales can be realistically expected for the expansions, it may lead to a very harsh reality where they might be forced to spare resources on them to still have enough to stay afloat long enough to develop the next game.

This is all just guessing of course, possibly influenced by this harshest moment in the dev cycle, and I hope to be proven wrong, but for the first time I ain't very optimistic about Egosoft's ability to come through in the end, as they did in the past.

[apricotslice]

Maybe I shouldn't have read the reviews.

Does anyone remember this old thread? Seems nothing has changed.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=121168

[Kadatherion]

Does anyone remember this old thread? Seems nothing has changed.

Well, something has changed: the autopillock is still suicidal for the player, not as much for the AI, meaning the situation is a bit different than what brought upon Litcube's Bounce to somehow salvage the game back then. This, however, is probably more related to the fact there's not really many "swarms" of fighters anymore, combat really works in a different way now (more arcadey in a sense, artificial in another, hard to explain but it just feels less cinematic and on a much smaller scale: you'll get what I mean if and when you give it a try).

On the other hand there's a lot of new issues, AI controlled ships for instance now can barely manage to shoot at each other, with cap ships moseying around and often never being able to really get in position to effectively shoot at each other if not for a salvo here and there (in a way kinda similar to what they did because of collision detection against stations in X3... just worse). Follow behaviour (and as such all tasks that include a follow order) is utterly broken, as it doesn't update in real time and ships trying to reach another asset just fly to where that asset was at the time the command was issued, only reassessing if the target isn't there anymore once they get there (what Buzz mentioned), which often breaks a lot of common gameplay and several combat gameplay scenarios, since any attack command is about first following the target to get into combat range... and so on.

It's quite bad, really. The patches until now have fixed a fair number of bugs and stability issues, so the game itself has become definitely more "playable", but for what concerns underlying, core mechanic and design issues (some of which really encompassing the whole game, like the map UI performance issues we were talking about - again - just a little earlier in the topic about radar ranges) not much has yet been addressed (or sometimes even acknowledged), which is why our initial enthusiasm ("yeah it's an X game so it's broken at launch, but it will get better") is slowly fading away. I myself reviewed the game positively on Steam after launch, pretty much all on a "it has potential" basis, I might have to retcon that if 3.0 and the Split don't begin to seriously turn things around, that's going to be the deadline for me. I mean, look at another one of the few recent topics: they didn't even bother yet to fill the still pretty much empty encyclopedia. It's there, with the various entries, eh? Just empty. It was bad enough it was like that at launch, taking advantage of people being more and more used by now to games releasing unfinished with all the early access or live services fads being the norm nowadays, but 7 months later it begins to look alarming to everyone, even the most forgiving. A lot of things keep screaming minimum mandatory effort, and you don't turn a game around like they did before with minimum effort.

[apricotslice]

I get the impression X4 is everything Devnet wanted back in X3 days, but they never bothered to fix anything first, or redesign it so the basics worked properly before introducing what people wanted next.

Which is disappointing.

For me, the autopillok was what broke X3AP finally. To find the same thing still there in X4 is truly disappointing. The whole pathfinder code needed to be redesigned from scratch and then core dynamics of things built on top of that.

Oh well. Wait for 3.0 to come out and people to either claim yay or neigh.

[Falcrack]

collectors edition gives you first 2 DLCs for free and there is no any DLC out yet, but after 3.0 patch ego will release a Split DLC

Not exactly "for free" considering you are paying an extra $30 for the collectors edition.

I bought collector's edition for ~$75, it's a bit more than I normally pay for a game, but I wanted to support Egosoft in their continued development of X4.

[Falcrack]

I get the impression X4 is everything Devnet wanted back in X3 days, but they never bothered to fix anything first, or redesign it so the basics worked properly before introducing what people wanted next.

Which is disappointing.

For me, the autopillok was what broke X3AP finally. To find the same thing still there in X4 is truly disappointing. The whole pathfinder code needed to be redesigned from scratch and then core dynamics of things built on top of that.

Oh well. Wait for 3.0 to come out and people to either claim yay or neigh.

The autopilot feature of X4 (where you are sitting down and turn it on to get to your destination) is something I don't use a lot, and is still a bit wonky. What works far better is simply getting out of your chair, and letting the NPC pilot sit down and fly to the destination. NPC pilots work a lot better than the autopilot feature.

[Observe]

Oh well. Wait for 3.0 to come out and people to either claim yay or neigh.

Hi Apricotslice. I'm in a similar position. I have not obtained X4, because the elements that matter to me most, are unfinished and/or broken and the things I like least, continue to persist. Thing is, I see zero evidence that 3.0 will significantly change anything. Nevertheless, I continue to watch progress, in the unrealistic hope that this game will miraculously be transformed into something that at least vaguely represents what I am interested in.

Still, some people seem to like the game as it is. I am happy they are finding enjoyment.

[apricotslice]

Still, some people seem to like the game as it is. I am happy they are finding enjoyment.

The fan who started me off looking at it, was new to the X series with X4. After a short time talking to me on FB, he's now bought the Superbox and is going back to X3R.

Oops.